This paper investigates the effect of social ties between acquirers and targets on merger performance. Using data on educational background and past employment, we construct a measure of the extent of cross-firm social connection between directors and senior executives at the acquiring and the...

This article investigates whether the business relations between mutual funds and brokerage firms influence sell-side analyst recommendations. Using a unique data set that discloses brokerage firms' commission income derived from each mutual fund client as well as the share holdings of these...

We consider measures of stock-picking skill of mutual fund managers based on the earnings announcement returns of the stocks that they hold and trade. Relative to standard approaches, this approach focuses on an especially informative subset of the returns data, potentially increasing power to...

The use of judgmental anchors or reference points in valuing corporations affects several basic aspects of merger and acquisition activity including offer prices, deal success, market reaction, and merger waves. Offer prices are biased towards the 52-week high, a highly salient but largely...

We propose and test a catering theory of nominal stock prices. The theory predicts that when investors place higher valuations on low-price firms, managers will maintain share prices at lower levels, and vice-versa. Using measures of time-varying catering incentives based on valuation ratios,...

Real investors and markets are too complicated to be neatly summarized by a few selected biases and trading frictions. The quot;top downquot; approach to behavioral finance focuses on the measurement of reduced form, aggregate sentiment and traces its effects to stock returns. It builds on the...

We study how investor sentiment affects the cross-section of stock returns. We predict that a wave of investor sentiment has larger effects on securities whose valuations are highly subjective and difficult to arbitrage. Consistent with this prediction, we find that when beginning-of-period...

We build a model that helps to explain why increases in liquidity - such as lower bid-ask spreads, a lower price impact of trade, or higher turnover - predict lower subsequent returns in both firm-level and aggregate data. The model features a class of irrational investors, who underreact to the...

We use a simple model to outline the conditions under which corporate investment is sensitive to non-fundamental movements in stock prices. The key prediction is that stock prices have a stronger impact on the investment of quot;equity dependentquot; firms - firms that need external equity to...

Classical models predict that the division of stock returns into dividends and capital appreciation does not affect investor consumption patterns, while mental accounting and other economic frictions predict that investors have a higher propensity to consume from stock returns in the form of...